Government notifies Cauvery Tribunal award

New Delhi: After six years, the final award of the Cauvery Waters Dispute Tribunal was notified on Wednesday. The move came after the Supreme Court rapped the Centre for delaying the decision and had on February four set February 20 as the deadline to issue notification.

The notification was issued in Tuesday's date. The Tribunal, comprising chairman Justice N P Singh and members N S Rao and Sudhir Narain, in a unanimous award in February, 2007 had determined the total availability of water in the Cauvery basin at 740 thousand million cubic (TMC) feet at the Lower Coleroon Anicut site.

The proceedings of the Tribunal, set up in June, 1990, went on for more than 16 years. In, what was then described as a balancing act, the Tribunal gave Tamil Nadu 419 TMC of water(as against the demand of 562 TMC); Karnataka 270 TMC (as against its demand of 465 TMC); Kerala 30 TMC and Puducherry 7 TMC.

Cauvery dispute saga

• Centre constituted a tribunal in 1990 to find a solution to decades old Cauvery Water Dispute

• The tribunal heard the points of all the stakeholders for 16 years and finally on February 5, 2007 announced its verdict giving 419 billion ft³ of the river water annually to Tamil Nadu and 270 billion ft³ to Karnataka, 30 billion ft to Kerala and 7 billion ft³ to Puducherry

• Later, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka filed a petition before the tribunal seeking a review of Feb 5 order

• Sep 21 2012: Karnataka filed a petition before the Cauvery River Authority seeking review of its 19 September ruling

• Sep 24 2012: Tamil Nadu filed a petition in the Supreme Court seeking its direction to Karnataka to release water for the state

• Sep 28 2012: The Supreme Court slammed the Karnataka government and directed it to release 9,000 cusecs of Cauvery water everyday for Tamil Nadu, until October 15

• Oct 4 2012: Karnataka government filed a review petition before the Supreme Court seeking a stay on its Sep 28 order

• Oct 8 2012: The Apex Court announced that the release of 9,000 cusecs has to be continued and it is up to the CRA head, as a responsible person, to ensure this happened. Within a few hours, Karnataka stopped release of Cauvery water

• Oct 9 2012: Tamil Nadu filed a contempt petition against the Karnataka for flouting the verdict of the Apex Court

• Oct 17, 2012: Tamil Nadu, in a fresh plea in the Apex Court, reiterated its demand to ask Karnataka to release the water as per the distress sharing formula

• Nov 15 2012: The Cauvery Monitoring Committee directed the Karnataka to release 4.81 tmcft to Tamil Nadu between 16 and 30 November

• Dec 6 2012: The Apex Court directed Karnataka to release 10,000 cusecs of water to Tamil Nadu. The Court had also asked the Centre to indicate the time frame within which the final decision of the Cauvery Water Dispute Tribunal, which was given in February 2007, was to be notified

For environmental protection, it had reserved 10 TMC. The Tribunal's award will come into effect within 90 days of its notification by the Centre. As per law, the award comes into being after being notified by the Centre through its publication in a gazette.

After the issuance of the notification, institutions like the Cauvery River Authority(CRA) chaired by the Prime Minister and the CMC will cease to exist.

New organisations like the Cauvery Management Board and the Cauvery Water Regulation Committee will be constituted which will have representatives from all the co-basin states, experts in hydrology and agriculture.

They will be headed by an officer of the central government and will be under the control of the Centre.

While Tamil Nadu had been demanding an early notification, Karnataka was opposed to it saying till the times cases filed by it in the Supreme Court are settled, the notification should be kept in abeyance.